


found a wife and a home (and a family that matters)

by blackorchids



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: Adoptive Parents Red and Kitty Forman, Character Study, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-24 18:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22482265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: Hyde's been part of the Forman family foryearsbefore they make him move in.
Relationships: Jackie Burkhart/Steven Hyde, Kitty Forman/Red Forman, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Steven Hyde & Kitty Forman, Steven Hyde & Red Forman, Steven Hyde & Red Forman & Kitty Forman
Comments: 11
Kudos: 188





	found a wife and a home (and a family that matters)

**Author's Note:**

> title from the Joe Walsh song, _Family_
> 
> I do not know what this is tbH

When Hyde is six years old, he convinces Forman to hire him as a bodyguard and immediately makes his worth known when two fourth graders try and give him a wedgie and Hyde kicks them both in the shins until they run away, crying.

Forman tries to hug him, but Hyde holds him off with his hand, his bony little body easy to hold off. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Hyde still lets Forman sit with him after recess, next to a too-tall boy wearing too-short jeans and a girl with orange hair who’d been the only one to kick a home-run during kickball.

It takes two weeks for Forman to wear him down enough to get him to go meet his parents, and Hyde knows what he looks like, a little boy covered in grime and wearing clothes he’d stolen from the lost and found. He’s definitely expecting some shared looks between Eric’s mom and dad, but he’s not expecting Eric’s mom to force them into a bathtub with Eric, filling it with bubbles and toys.

She makes dinner while they’re in there and he’s never seen so much food in his life, but by the way the rest of them are acting, he feels like this must be the norm at Forman’s house. He has two helpings of everything and Mrs. Forman sends him home with a bag full of left-overs.

For the rest of grade school, she makes sure he does his bathing and eating at the Formans’ house at least twice a week, and kisses him on the forehead when he comes and goes and he keeps Forman out of trashcans and toilets and lockers.

Red bitches at him almost as much as he bitches at Forman, but he cuffs him on the shoulder or the back of the head and looks over his homework for him and makes him sweep the driveway and teaches him how to change the oil in the Vista Cruiser.

And when they make the insane decision to sign Eric up for baseball, they sign Hyde up too, without even hesitating, and when they come to the games, they cheer for Hyde’s hits as much as they would for Forman’s, if he’d ever actually hit anything. Donna’s the MVP that year, but Hyde isn’t too far behind, and Red ruffles his hair and beams, proud as anything, after the season finale game.

After a Thanksgiving spent mostly at the Formans’, Forman comes to school on Monday with a plate of cookies covered in plastic and, showy and fake, says, “Oh, Steven, you left these on the bus by accident.”

Hyde doesn’t take the school bus because his house is way outside of the bussing zone, and it’s not like his mom makes enough money for the whole school-birthday schtick, though his dad has been saying for a few weeks that they’d probably be able to get some pizza for dinner the night of.

The class loves the cookies Forman’s mom baked for them, and he gets twenty happy-birthdays and a few stickers and a lollipop and the disappointment the following night when his dad doesn’t even come home much less bring pizza is softened with the memory of Forman’s parents having him ‘round for dinner the night before.

Mrs. Forman had made a roast and the extra-cheesy potatoes that Hyde loved and a cake with a smiley-face mapped out on the icing in colorful m&ms. Laurie has to let him and Forman have the remote for the whole night and Red had clapped him on the back and ruffled his hair, and they’d presented him with a new baseball mitt with a red bow stuck to the palm.

In fifth grade, Red gives Forman the sex talk and makes sure Hyde is there too, sitting on the foot of Forman’s bed, all three of them determinedly not looking one another in the eye as Red painstakingly describes what sex is like _goes in—_ , traumatizing them as thoroughly as possible before he tells them that if they ever got a girl pregnant he’d put his foot in their ass.

“It’s your responsibility to take care of that kid,” Red tells them seriously. “So don’t be dumbasses.”

Hyde spends most weekends helping Red fix up the Vista Cruiser, quickly graduating from holding the flashlight and fetching the wrenches to troubleshooting with Red. He catches on quickly, the engine making more sense than anything he’s ever learned in school, and he’s thirteen the first time Red nods after he hypothesizes what might be wrong and hands him the wrench, telling him to fix it himself.

The growing car knowledge puts him in his father’s good graces for a long time, is able to help out when their shitty Pinto craps out again and again. 

When he’s fourteen and in danger of being held back, it isn’t Edna or Bud who come into the school to meet with his teachers, it’s Kitty, looking tired but trustworthy in her nurse uniform, and she listens and nods along, shooting Hyde disappointed looks every time there’s a lull in conversation.

The following night at dinner, Red slaps him upside the head and Hyde spends the night at the Formans’ little table, homework spread out in front of him, pages and pages of incompleted assignments that he’s now responsible for.

Hyde starts dating Jackie and Kitty teaches him how to dance so he can take her to the disco, and Red gives him a safe sex talk that is so terrible to experience that it takes _weeks_ before Hyde is ready to start moving his hands past the safety of Jackie’s waist again.

It is not Hyde’s own parents who get him through high school, it’s the Formans. When WB comes back into his life, he’s thrilled and nervous in a way that is wholly unfamiliar to him, and he hopes he makes his biological father proud, and he appreciates the opportunities that WB is giving him.

But when Hyde decides to propose to Jackie, nervous and going out of his mind, it’s not WB who he goes to.

He tells Red and Kitty he’s going to marry Jackie a little after her twenty third birthday, and Kitty cries and Red leans back in his chair, looking as proud as Hyde has ever seen him, and it feels like it’s the first time in weeks that his pulse has slowed.

Jackie had shocked the hell out of him when she’d whispered, half asleep, one night that she thought she wanted a small wedding. Neither of her parents are invited, and the part of Hyde that is still the insecure little fourteen year old ass finds it surreal that he has more family than the Burkhart heir. WB and Edna and Bud are all invited to the wedding, though WB is the only one who comes. No one walks Jackie down the aisle, and she looks happy as hell about it.

The day before Mother’s Day, Hyde wakes up early as hell to run to the Piggly Wiggly and buy roses for Jackie and a plush octopus for Penny. He makes his girls breakfast and lets Jackie have full control of their plans and their remote and their dinner plans.

In the morning, though, he goes over to the Formans to spend _actual_ Mother’s Day with the Formans, like always.

**Author's Note:**

> I was definitely going somewhere with this, but I, uh, forgot???  
> sorry  
> Come complain about my directionless writing on [tumblr](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com)!


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